First of all, National Treasure, the first one, is one of my favorite movie ever. I love history, specifically American history, and it had clever references and facts about American history that lead to finding the treasure in a way that is not predictable. That being said, I felt something was missing in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It almost felt like the writers could not think of any new, clever clues for Nicolas Cage to solve or more suspense without action scenes.
First lets look at the positives. This movie was very well-done. The acting was as superb as the first (Nicolas Cage and Justin Bartha are amazing). It was very believable. Also the action scenes are excellent and full of invigorating suspense. The scene near the unexpected end where they had to balanced the steel block thing in the cave was terrific. All the action scenes were awesome: right out of an Indiana Jones movie. Another thing I liked was the ironic humor and sarcasm used by Nicolas Cage's character and other characters throughout the movie that gave it a light, fun feel. With interesting history references and a brilliant score by Trevor Rabin, what could be wrong with it?
You may not agree with me. But I felt that the ending, and a few other scenes were rushed. For example, they spent literally about five minutes in Paris both finding and figuring out the clue. After that they moved on to London, they spent about 15 minutes there, 5 of them were spent finding the clue. It all felt rushed which tended to confuse me. And the ending definitely did not satisfy me. It was too sudden and I felt it was incomplete, even though the movie was over two hours long.
As I think back to some of the scenes in the beginning and middle of the movie, I forget why I included "negatives" because it was so brilliant and I loved it as much as the first one. But then I remember the ending. it just didn't satisfy like the last movie did. I can't explain the nice feeling the first movie gave me: its what the perfect movie gives you I guess. Anyway, I would recommend this to anyone who has scene the first one and anyone who would like a good crime/action/adventure flick with excellent acting with lovable and believable characters. It's a great movie, it just didn't live up to my expectations or the original's
